How Email Changed the World

Do you remember life before email? If you were born after 1995 then you probably don’t.

It’s now hard to imagine a time when a fax was considered the height of sophistication or a pager was the only way to reach someone when they were out of the office.

Email has become such a huge part of our lives. Ask anyone over the age of 15 and they’re pretty much guaranteed to have at least one if not two email address linked to their name.

We take for granted that we can reach out to people online 24/7. We presume that people should always be checking their inbox for updates or notifications. But this wasn’t always the case. In this article, we outline just some of the ways that email has changed the workplace and the world.

It’s more environmentally friendly

This is a bit of a no-brainer. Going paperless saves countless trees each year. Before email and cloud data became the norm, companies had to rely on paper for pretty much everything.

While there are no recent stats on the number of trees that are saved by using email each year in 2010, the team at MailChimp calculated that 2,4000 trees are saved each day.

Remote working

Today, more and more companies are offering employees the option of remote working. This simply wasn’t possible before the invention of email.

The Trades Union Congress (TUC) estimates that the number of UK people working from home increased by a fifth in the 10 years to 2016, and now stands at around 1.5 million people.

Blurred working lines

Email changed how we communicate at work. Suddenly colleagues could shoot each other a quick note instead of picking up the phone to call. As a result, workplace chatter began to slip into our personal lives.

Employees became obsessive about checking their inboxes and replying to emails late at night became standard practice.

Thankfully, workers are now more aware of the need for work-life balance. In fact, some companies do not allow their colleagues to reply to emails outside of working hours however the issue still exists for many.

Online identity

Email addresses have become the standard way to identify yourself online. Think about it, it’s usually the first piece of information you hand over to a new acquaintance or businesses.

Think of all the things you need an email address for. Try setting up an Instagram account, ordering something from Amazon or applying for a job without one. Chances are, you won’t get very far.